#13 — Eastern Condors

This is an ongoing, illustrated countdown of my 49 1/2 most essential action movies. Last week I talked about a Nic Cage classic that is as funny as it is exciting, Face/Off.

There was an idea — to bring together a group of remarkable people, to see if they could become something more. They were called The Expendables, and nobody missed them when they were gone because they never expired, just went a little moldy. For almost the entirety of my life, I didn’t realize there was already a Hong Kong Expendables with a multigenerational Hall of Fame cast of action talent that somehow manages to be the sum of its parts. This was the real big idea that nobody shared with me for most of my life. I could have been expended before ever seeing it, a sobering thought.

They called it Eastern Condors, named after their mission to destroy a stash of weapons. It’s sort of a Dirty Dozen-ish deal where these Chinese inmates are being offered a pardon, American citizenship, and money. There’s some small print to read, but what better options do they have? I really like the title. It carries that old fashioned sense of adventure that makes the characters feel like some special club, like “Force 10 from Navarone”, “The Wild Bunch”, or “Where Eagles Dare”. Not just anybody can be a Condor Kid, first you gotta do a crime and be put in prison, then you have to find a general that doesn’t value your life, but does value your ability to do dangerous missions. After that, I think you’re in. It also helps if you know kung fu.

The action pedigree of the cast is off the charts. Heavy hitters like Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao top the list, but you’ve also got Joyce Godenzi (who learned is wife to Sammo, after googling “Joyce Godenzi Single”) as the leader of some guerrilla fighters who team up with the Condors. Wah Yuen (Supercop) is the Final Boss. Yasuaki Kurata and Billy Chow both get to be henchmen (they both fight Jet Li in ‘Fist of Legend’, one of the 49 1/2 most essential martial arts movies), along with Dick Wei (Project A, among a million other credits). Then you have behind-the-camera legends like Cory Yuen and Yuen Woo-Ping padding out the supporting cast and providing a touch of levity. There’s even more, but I think you get the point.

One thing I think this movie does unexpectedly well is paring the stylistic tendencies of Eastern and Western action. I guess that’s another thing the title alludes to. There’s an underlying sentiment of gamesmanship from the filmmakers to make their own special version of whatever Missing in Action installment they saw and laughed at.

Ching-Ying Lam plays the Lieutenant and leader of the team. In the opening scene he watches a soldier struggling to raise the American flag outside their base. After being briefed on the mission, he returns and the rope is still stuck. He’s seen enough incompetence — so he flings his hat to the top of the pole, climbs it, put his hat back on, unhooks the rope, slides down, salutes the flag, and hops back into his jeep. He considered also tying Private Pyle’s shoes for him, but they were in a hurry. The movie seems to have an admiration for what it’s ripping off, while also occasionally saying “hey, bet you never saw Rambo kill someone with a leaf before”. This kind of showmanship is the whole purpose of the film’s existence.

I love when Rambo blows things up, but what if he also fought like a Shaolin monk? Why not both? It works. Sammo is really playing against type here, as a more slimmed down and stoic warrior, while the versatile Yuen Baio handles most of the comic shtick. They all fight really good though. You can be wacky and still bust out some Mantis style kung fu, and it never registers as out of place.

These guys are basically doing a Rambo movie without sacrificing any of their established talents. Sammo wears a red headband and tosses grenades in between punches. Joyce Godenzi mans a .50 caliber machine gun as convincingly as Stallone ever did. Wah Yuen gets to be villainous in that broadly cartoonish way that highlights his quirky appearance and dynamic movement.

There’s really not a lot to dissect with this one. It’s one of the leanest, most straight forward action romps on the countdown. The birds go on a mission to blow stuff up. It’s wall-to-wall action, and the lengthy climax is the best part of the movie — just as you’d hope. It’s the Hong Kong approach to such extremely Western tropes that makes it. If you ever watched First Blood: part II and thought “this is great, but I’d love to see the Sammo Hung version”, maybe you will be as happy as I was to find out that is a real thing.

I think this is a really good viewing for small gatherings to take in all the crazy stunts and action together — but it’s also a great way to familiarize yourself with so many major contributors to martial arts cinema. They Voltron’d their powers to make a GI Joe shoot-em-up without leaving the kung fu at the door, and the results are amazing. I wish we had the Sammo version of The Avengers, Heat, or Aliens, but he’s a little old at this point. We’ll always have his Expendables.